It's become quite the thing to compare the Occupy Wall Street protest to the Tea Party, as the left-wing movement grows in momentum and starts to look like a legitimate political force. But nobody asked the Tea Party about that until Friday, when Tea Party Express chairwoman Amy Kramer told Politico she was not at all pleased with the comparison. "I don’t think it’s the left’s answer to the tea party movement, and there are a lot of people there that don’t support Barack Obama,” Kremer told Politico's MJ Lee. “I think they’re just unhappy people that don’t know really what they want.” Kramer's main complaints with the protesters echoes that of many of their critics: They're disorganized, don't have a coherent message, and use high-tech devices to get their message out, which she sees as hypocritical. 

But another Right-wing critic of the movement took those complaints a step further on Friday: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, called the movement a "growing mob." Speaking at the conservative Value Voters Summit in Washington, D.C., Cantor offered some of the Republican party's harshest criticism yet of the protesters and their Democratic supporters. "Some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans," he said. Kremer, however, didn't necessarily disagree with the idea of protesting, in general, and actually had what could be seen as advice for the Wall Street occupation: "The [Tea Party] movement has matured, and we have learned that having a rally, it’s great, it attracts people but it doesn’t affect change just because you’re out on the lawn or 20 days and 20 nights."

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Adam Martin